Decatur County Journal, Leon, Iowa

The Decatur County Historical Society met in the assembly room at the public library building in this city Wednesday afternoon, January 8th. The meeting, which was only fairly attended, was called to order by President, G.P. ARNOLD, of Garden Grove. The session, however, proved highly interesting and profitable.

A paper upon the streams of the county written by J.E. VAIL, of Garden Grove, was read by President ARNOLD. It was an excellent paper and was greatly enjoyed. A paper on the "Settlement of Garden Grove" was read by HEMEN C. SMITH, of Lamoni, Secretary of the Society. MR. SMITH's paper is published in this issue of the JOURNAL. The following have enrolled as members of the Society since the last meeting:

Leon: JOHN W. HARVEY, MRS. JOHN W. HARVEY, C.W. HOFFMAN, MRS. C.W. HOFFMAN, MARION F. STOOKEY, MRS. MARION F. STOOKEY, S.A. GATES, MRS. S.A. GATES, DR. MARY GATES, DR. H.R. LAYTON, MRS. H.R. LAYTON, MRS. THIRZA YOUNG, MISS BELLE THOMPSON, MRS. F.E. THOMPSON, S. VARGA, MRS. S. VARGA, MRS. KATE ARNOLD, ROBERT SMITH, JAMES DELK, W.E. MYERS, MRS. W.E. MYERS, DR. O.W. FOXWORTHY, MRS. O.W. FOXWORTHY, JOHN CHASTAIN, MRS. JOHN CHASTAIN, MRS. HORACE FARQUHAR, MRS. W.H. ALBAUGH, JAMES HARMON, CHARLES SWANSON, MRS. CHARLES SWANSON, O.E. HULL, MRS. S.C. PENNIWELL, M. WOODARD, MRS. M. WOODARD, MRS. GEO. L. JACKSON, J.L. HARVEY, MRS. J.L. HARVEY, MRS. J.J. EVANS, MRS. L.P. SIGLER, MISS HIMENA HOFFMAN.

Lamoni: D.A. ANDERSON, MRS. D.A. ANDERSON, D.F. LAMBERT, MRS. D.F. LAMBERT, I.W. ALLENDER, MRS. I.W. ALLENDER, MISS VIOLA ALLENDER, MRS. HEMEN C. SMITH, OSCAR ANDERSON, F.M. WELD, MRS. F.M. WELD, JOHN SMITH, MRS. JOHN SMITH, W.J. MATHER, MRS. W.J. MATHER, B.M. RUSSELL, MRS. B.M. RUSSELL, F.L. THOMPSON, MRS. F.L. THOMPSON, LAURA THOMPSON, GRACE THOMPSON, W.A. FRANCE, E.A. SMITH, MRS. E.A. SMITH, JESSIE CAVE, ANNIE ALLEN, C.F. CHURCH, MRS. C.F. CHURCH, J.R. SMITH, MARY BANTA, ETHEL BANTA, MRS. L.L. RESSEGUIE, MRS. M. WALKER, R.M. ELVIN, FRANCIS DAVIS, A.H. SMITH, ESTELLA WIGHT, F.E. COCHRAN, WILLIAM ANDERSON, ROBERT TURNER, C.H. BARROWS, MRS. C.H. BARROWS, JOHN GARVER, J.W. WIGHT, LEON A. GOULD, MRS. R.S. SALYARDS, DANIEL JONES, MRS. DANIEL JONES, C.I. CARPENTER, RICHARD J. LAMBERT.

Pleasanton: DUNCAN CAMPBELL.

President ARNOLD in a very instructive speech presented a fine specimen of Fossel Crinoid at Garden Grove. This, with other specimens, and papers were placed in the charge of the curators. The next meeting of the Society will probably be held in Lamoni upon the call of the President. Following is MR. SMITH's paper:

'EARLY SETTLEMENT AT GARDEN GROVE' - by Hemen C. Smith

It appears that what is now known as Decatur County, Iowa, has had attraction for the oppressed, not only of other nations, but of our own. Five years prior to the advent of the Hungarians, of which our honored President wrote at our last meeting, a settlement was made at Garden Grove by exiles from a sister state. To enter into the merits of the controversy which caused them to be expelled from their homes is not our province. It is the old story of long established organizations objecting to the formation of new ones and of protesting to the point of violence. Without entering into discussion of the issues it will be sufficient to present the condition of this people as they left their former homes and arrived within the precincts of what is now Decatur County. In doing this we cannot do better than to quote from an address delivered by Colonel Thomas L. Kane before the Pennsylvania Historical Society on the 26th of March, l850:

"A few years ago, ascending the upper Mississippi in the autumn when its waters were low, I was compelled to travel by land past the region of the rapids. My road lay through the Half-Breed tract, a fine section of Iowa, which the unsettled state of its land titles had appropriated as a sanctuary for coiners, horse thieves and other outlaws. I had left my steamer at Keokuk, at the foot of the Lower Falls, to hire a carriage and to contend for some fragments of a dirty meal with the swarming flies, the only scavengers of the locality. From this place to where the deep water of the river returns, my eye wearied to see everywhere sordid, vagabond, and idle settlers; and a country marred, without being improved, by their careless hands."

"I was descending the last hillside upon my journey when a landscape in delightful contrast broke upon my view. Half encircled by a bend of the river, a beautiful city lay glittering in the fresh morning sun; its bright new dwellings set in cool, green gardens, ranging up around a stately dome shaped hill, which was crowned by a noble marble edifice whose high, tapering spire was radiant with white and gold. The city appeared to cover several miles; and beyond it, in the background, there rolled off a fair country chequered by the careful lines of fruitful husbandry. The unmistakable marks of industry, enterprise and educated wealth everywhere, made the scene one of singular and most striking beauty."

"It was a natural impulse to visit this inviting region. I procured a skiff and rowing across the river landed at the chief wharf of the city. No one met me there. I looked, and saw no one. I could hear no one move; though the quiet everywhere was familiar with death scenes. He, so long as I remained, mumbled in his patient's ear a monotonous and melancholy prayer, between the pauses of which I heard the hiccup and sobbing of two little girls, who were sitting upon a piece of driftwood outside.

"Dreadful, indeed, was the suffering of these forsaken beings; bowed and cramped by cold and sunburn alternating as each weary day and night dragged on, they were almost all of them the crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital nor poor house, no friends to offer them any. They could not satisfy the feeble cravings of their sick; they had not bread to quiet the fractious hunger-cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all of them alike were bivouacked in tatters, wanting even covering to comfort those whom the sick shiver of fever was searching to the marrow.

"These were Mormons in Lee County, Iowa, in the fourth week of the month of September, in the year of our Lord, l846. The city--it was Nauvoo, Illinois. The Mormons were the owners of that city and the smiling country around. And those who had stopped their ploughs, who had silenced their hammers, their axes, their shuttles, and their workshop wheels; those who had put out their fires, who had eaten their food, spoiled their orchards, and trampled under foot their thousands of acres of unharvested bread; these were the keepers of their dwellings, the carousers in their temple, whose drunken riot insulted the ears of the dying.

"I think it was as I turned from the wretched night-watch of which I have spoken that I first listened to the sounds of revel of a party of the guard within the city. Above the distant hum of the voices of many occasionally rose distinct the loud oath-tainted exclamation and the falsely intonated scrap of vulgar song; but lest this requiem should go unheeded, every now and then when their boisterous orgies strove to attain a sort of ecstatic climax, a cruel spirit of insulting frolic carried some of them up into the high belfry of the temple steeple, and there, with the wicked childishness of inebriates, they whooped and shrieked and beat the drum that I had seen and rang in charivaric unison their loud-tongued steamboat bell.

"They were, all told, not more than six hundred and forty persons who were thus lying on the river flats. But the Mormons of Nauvoo and its dependencies had been numbered the year before at over twenty thousand. Where were they? They had last been seen, carrying in mournful train their sick and wounded, halt and blind, to disappear behind the western horizon, pursuing the phantom of another home. Hardly anything else was known of them; and people asked with curiosity, "What had been their fate--what their fortunes?"

As stated by Colonel Kane, these people whom he visited on the banks of the Mississippi were but the remnant of the people who had inhabited the city described by him, most of whom had already departed for the west.

Iowa with her magnificent resources was then but little known. In December, l853, George William Curtis wrote to a friend in the east from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, saying:

"I have seen a prairie, I have darted all day across a prairie, I have been near the Mississippi, I have been invited to Iowa, which lies somewhere over the western horizon."

It was into this almost unknown region that this unfortunate people launched in those early days to find a resting place where they could again build their homes and enjoy the freedom of which their country boasted.

Several companies had left the city of Nauvoo, taking a westward course into this unknown region. "Somewhere over the Western Horizon," and, as Colonel Kane says, "The question was, "What had been their fate; what their fortunes?"

The particular company of which we speak left the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, in the early part of February, l846. It was composed of several hundred families. They made their first camp on Sugar Creek, a few miles west of the river, where they remained for nearly a month, during which time they had great difficulty getting sustenance for themselves and their cattle and horses. Orson Pratt, who was a leading spirit in the movement, in his private journal remarks concerning this time that they required many hundreds of bushels of corn daily; but as they had not yet launched into the regions altogether uninhabited, they were enabled to buy large quantities of Indian corn from time to time with money and labor.

On March first the company moved on. The following day they camped on the banks of the Des Moines River, four miles below the village of Farmington. Then they proceeded up the east bank of the Des Moines River until they reached Bonaparte's Mills, where they crossed the river March 5. The weather was cold, and, it being too early in the spring for grass, their teams subsisted upon the limbs and bark of trees. Heavy rains and snows impeded their progress, while frosty nights rendered the situation very uncomfortable.

Their camp was organized thoroughly, with captains of hundreds, of fifties and of tens, and all other necessary officers. Their condition was made more tolerable by the hunters finding game, and Mr. Pratt says they brought into camp more or less deer, wild turkeys and prairie hens every day.

The real condition of this company can be best described by quoting again from the address of Colonel Kane:

"Under the most favoring circumstances an expedition of this sort, undertaken at such a season of the year, could scarcely fail to be disastrous. But the pioneer company had set out in haste and were very imperfectly supplied with necessaries. The cold was intense. They moved in the teeth of keen-edged northwest winds, such as sweep down the Iowa peninsula from the ice-bound regions of the timber-shaded Slave Lake and Lake of the Woods; on the bald prairie there, nothing above the dead grass breaks their free course over the hard-rolled hills. Even along the scattered water courses, where they broke the thick ice to give their cattle drink, the annual autumn fires had left little wood of value. The party, therefore, often wanted for good campfires, the first luxury of all travelers; but, to men insufficiently furnished with tents and other appliances of shelter, almost essential to life. After days of fatigue their nights were often passed in restless efforts to save themselves from freezing. Their tock of foot also proved inadequate, and, as their systems became impoverished, their suffering from cold increased.

"Sickened with catarrhal affections, manacled by the fetters of dreadfully acute rheumatism, some contrived for a while to get over the shortening day's march and drag along some others. But the sign of an impaired circulation soon began to show itself in the liability of all to be dreadfully frost-bitten. The hardiest and strongest became helplessly crippled. About the same time the strength of their beasts of draught began to fail. The small supply of provender they could carry with them had given out. The winter-bleached prairie straw proved devoid of nourishment, and they could only keep them from starving by seeking for the browse, as it was called, a green bark and tender buds and branches of the cotton wood and other stinted growths of the hollows.

"To return to Nauvoo was apparently the only escape, but this would have been to give occasion for fresh mistrust and so to bring new trouble to those they had left there behind them. They resolved at least to hold their ground and to advance as they might, were it only by limping through the deep snows a few slow miles a day. They found a sort of comfort in comparing themselves to the exiles of Siberia and sought cheerfulness in earnest prayers for spring--longed for as morning by the tossing sick."

"The spring came at last. It overtook them in the Sac and Fox Country, still on the naked prairie, not yet half way over the trail they were following between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. But it brought its own share of troubles with it. The months with which it opened proved nearly as trying as the worst of winter.

"The snow and sleet and rain which fell, as it appeared to them, without intermission, made the road over the rich prairie soil as impassable as one vast bog of heavy black mud. Sometimes they would fasten the horses and oxen of four or five wagons to one and attempt to get ahead in this way, taking turns; but at the close of a day of hard toil for themselves and their cattle, they would find themselves a quarter or a half a mile from the place they left in the morning. The heavy rains raised all the water courses; the most trifling streams were impassable. Wood fit for bridging was often not to be had, and in such cases the only recourse was to halt for the freshets to subside--a matter in the case of the headwaters of the Chariton, for instance, of over three weeks' delay.

"These were weary waitings upon Providence. The most spirited and sturdy murmured most at their forced inactivity. And even the women, whose heroic spirits had been proof against the lowest thermometric fall, confessed their tempers fluctuated with the ceaseless variations of the barometer. It was the fact that the open winds of March and April brought with them more mortal sickness than the sharpest freezing weather.

"The frequent burials made the hardiest sicken. On the soldier's march it is a matter of discipline that, after the rattle of musketry over his comrade's grave, he shall tramp it to the music of some careless tune in a lively quick step. But, in the Mormon camp, the companion who lay ill and gave up the ghost within view of all, all saw as he stretched a corpse, and all attended to his last resting place. It was a sorrow, too, of itself to simple-hearted people, the deficient pomps of their imperfect style of funeral. The general hopefulness of human--including Mormon--nature, was well illustrated by the fact, that the most provident were found unfurnished with undertaker's articles; so that bereaved affection was driven to the most melancholy makeshifts.

"The best expedient generally was to cut down a log of some eight or nine feet long and, splitting it longitudinally, strip off its dark bark in two half cylinders. These, placed around the body of the deceased and bound firmly together with withes made of the alburnum, formed a rough sort of tubular coffin which surviving relations and friends, with a little show of black crape, could follow with its enclosure to the hole, a bit of ditch, dug to receive it in the wet ground of the prairie. They grieved to lower it down so poorly clad, and in such an unheeded grave. It was hard--was it right, thus hurriedly to plunge it in one of the undistinguishable waves of the great land sea, and leave it behind them there, under the cold north rain, abandoned to be forgotten? They had no tombstones; nor could they find rocks to pile the monumental cairn. So, when they had filled up the grave, and over it prayed a MISERERE prayer and tried to sing a hopeful psalm, their last office was to seek out landmarks, or call in the surveyor to help them to determine the bearings of valley bends, headlands, or forks and angles of constant streams, by which its position should in the future be remembered and recognized. The name of the beloved person, his age, the date of his death, and there marks were all registered with care. This party was then ready to move on. Such graves mark all the line of the first year of the Mormon travel--dispiriting milestones to failing stragglers in the rear.

"It is an error to estimate largely the number of Mormons dead of starvation, strictly speaking. Want developed disease, and made them sick under fatigue, and maladies that would otherwise have proved trifling. But only those who died of it outright who fell in out of the way places, that the hand of brotherhood could not reach. Among the rest no such thing as plenty was known while any went and hungered. If but a part of a group was supplied with provisions, the only result was that the whole went on half or quarter ration, according to the sufficiency that there was among them; and this so ungrudgingly and contentedly that, till some crisis or trial to their strength, they were themselves unaware that their health was sinking and their vital force impaired. Hale young men gave up their own provided food and shelter to the old and helpless and walked their way back to parts of the frontier states, chiefly Missouri and Iowa, where they were not recognized, and hired themselves out for wages, to purchase more. Others were sent there to exchange for meal and flour or wheat and corn the table and bed furniture and other last resources of personal property which a few had still retained.

"In a kindred spirit of paternal forecast, others, laid out great farms in the wilds and planted in them the grain saved from their own bread, that there might be harvests for those who should follow them. Two of these in the Sac and Fox Country and beyond it Garden Grove and Mount Pisgah included within their fences above two miles of land apiece, carefully planted in grain, with a hamlet of comfortable log cabins in the neighborhood of each.

"Through all this, the pioneers found redeeming comfort in the thought that their own suffering was the price of humanity to their friends at home. But the arrival of spring proved this a delusion. Before the warm weather had made the earth dry enough for east travel messengers came in from Nauvoo to overtake the party, with fear-exaggerated tales of outrage, and to urge the chief men to hurry back to the city that they might give counsel and assistance there. The enemy had only waited till the emigrants were supposed to be gone on their road too far to return to interfere with them, and then renewed their aggressions."

Notwithstanding this suffering, however, they seem to have been cheerful and devoted to their convictions. Under the date of April 5th, Elder Pratt says:

"It being Sunday a portion of our camp met together to offer up our sacrament to the Most High. After a few remarks by myself and Bishop Miller, we proceeded to break bread and administer in the holy ordinance of the Lord's Supper. At 6 o'clock in the evening we met with the Captains of the companies to make arrangements for sending twelve or fourteen miles to the settlements for corn to sustain our animals."

The next day, April 6th, his journal records the following:

"This morning, at the usual hour of prayer, we bowed before the Lord with thankful hearts, it being just sixteen years since the organization of this Church and we were truly grateful for the many manifestations of the goodness of God towards us as a people."

On the same day they sent nine or ten wagons with four yoke of oxen on each wagon to the settlements to obtain corn. These teams were gone two days, returning on the 8th, most of them empty. Great difficulty was found in finding sustenance for teams as they moved slowly westward.

On April 6th they arrived at a grove, which is described by Elder Pratt as "a very pleasant grove which we called Paradise; and about a mile to the south found the grass very good." Here they stopped several days and recruited their teams. Resuming their journey on the 22nd they arrived at their temporary resting place on the 24th of April, l846. Under that date Elder Pratt records the following:

"Yesterday we traveled about eight miles, today six miles. We came to a place which we named Garden Grove. At this point we determined to form a small settlement and open farms for the benefit of the poor and such as were unable, at present, to pursue their journey further, and also for the benefit of the poor who were yet behind."

On the 27th he records that at the sound of the horn they gathered together to organize for labor. One hundred men were appointed for cutting trees, splitting rails, and making fence; forty-eight to cut logs for the building of log houses; several were appointed to build a bridge; a number more for the digging of wells; some to make wood for plows; and several more to watch the flocks and keep them from straying; while others were sent several days' journey into the Missouri settlements to exchange horses, feather beds, and other property, for cows, provisions, etc.

On May l0 Elder Pratt's Journal records the following:

"A large amount of labor has been done since arriving in this grove; indeed the whole camp are very industrious. Many houses have been built, wells dug, extensive farms fenced, and the whole place assumes the appearance of having been occupied for years, and clearly shows what can be accomplished by union, industry and perseverance."

The recognized leader of this movement was Brigham Young; but Elder Orson Pratt, and his brother, Parley P. Pratt, seemed to come more clearly into the lime light of history during the movement than did Elder Young. They were apparently the leading spirits. Elder Orson Pratt was a scholar of no mean attainments, and during their travels from Nauvoo to Garden Grove, frequently took observations from the sun by the use of instruments in his possession, by which he ascertained the lattitude of their camp and corrected their time. He ascertained that Garden Grove was in lattitude 40 degrees and 52 minutes. How nearly this agrees with latter observations we are not able to say, but it is approximately correct.

Among the leading spirits was also Bishop George Miller, who was not always in harmony with other of the leaders in consequence of which he finally left them at winter quarters on the Missouri River.

Their meeting house was located on what is now the northeast-one-fourth of the northeast-one-fourth of sec. 33-70-24, now a part of the farm of William Waters, and within the present corporate limits of the town of Garden Grove.

Two farms were fenced and cultivated with an area respectively of l000 and 500 acres; a mill was erected for grinding corn on the south line of sec. 28, midway of the section.

The cemetery was located in the southeast part of the southeast one-fourth of sec. 28. There are now more than one hundred owners of the realty that was originally contained within the confines of these two fields mentioned above.

The leading men remained at Garden Grove but a short time, resuming their journey on May ll, to pursue their western pilgrimage and form other settlements for like purposes at what they called Mount Pisgah, in Union County, and at Kanesville (now Council Bluffs, Iowa.)

Such were the people, and under such were the circumstances under which the first town was founded in Decatur County.

Leaving this place these leading men left behind them a sufficient company to cultivate these fields and raise grain for sustenance of other parties who were to follow them in the exodus.

This colony was maintained until the spring of l852, some going and others coming from time to time, and it is estimated that at times there were as many as three hundred families at Garden Grove.

Finally they all disappeared leaving their temporary homes to be occupied by the later emigrants who came to that fruitful place until now there is no vestige left of the early settlement except the name Garden Grove which is appropriately perpetuated.

During the time of the settlement, Garden Grove was a recruiting station for emigrants coming from Europe and the eastern states enroute for Utah.

THE END. . .

Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
"With permission from the Leon Journal Reporter"
October 23, 200l